Hagerup reinstated, will sit out 2013

Getting back around his teammates is an important step in this process," said Hoke. "Will and I have had several discussions over the past five months, none of which have been about football. Our primary concern has been for him as a person, and that will not change. Will is a part of our family, and we will continue to offer the resources to help him learn and grow. I am pleased with his progress to this point, and he knows that must continue every day moving forward.

I think the comparison is that the two of them had multiple strikes. Daryl did not take advantage of his last chance and screwed it up by violating rules. His hope is that Hagerup will follow the rules set out for him and take advantage of the new start.

that these are the only 2 players that have been in this situation with Hoke thusfar. They're different in the what was commited but lay in the same punishment bracket. DC and the outcome for him will hopefully be a learning lesson for Hag. Good luck to him.

It is a plant that is now legal to use in many US states. We'll look back on this suspension in five to ten years when marijuana is legal and regulated like cigarettes and laugh. Imagine reading a story from 1995 about a player suspended for smoking some cigarettes or drinking alcohol. Oh the humanity! How many people does alcohol kill every year? How many car accidents does it cause? How many fights and abusive relationships involve it? Insane. You get more jail time for growing a plant than beating your wife.

Legal or not, he broke team rules. When a fraction of a second of reaction time can make the difference between winning and losing a game, an athlete can't afford to be like everyone else and use any substance that compromise his reaction time. That includes pot or even showing up with a hangover.

Grow up. In the real world you have to follow the laws, and in this case, the team rules. Idealism isn't an excuse. If Hagerup wants to play, he needs to follow team rules. And don't act like the herb is some totally inncouous substance that never causes harm. For all we know, Hagerup could have been missing work-outs, meetings, or classes to get high with his buddies. Oh, and players still get suspended for drinking alcohol.

It won't work if you do 10 non-smoking football players + 1 smoking football player because there is too much running in football and smokers cough when they run. I tried doing the math a few different ways, it just doesn't work.

"We are going to have great competition, that's how we feed our team, and that's how we are going to get better as a program."

If they can't, their grades suffer and they don't get PT? Rather than making assumptions based on generalizations and stereotypes we could base these decisions on... Oh, I don't know... Actual performance?

He broke the rules he agreed to and he suffers the consequences for breaking them. I don't have a problem with it so far as that goes. But that doesn't apply to the asinine laws or all of these silly justifications and mental gymnastics for why it should be a rule in the first place.

Marijuana affects your memory. Research has repeatedly demonstrated this. Given that it does this, If I'm a coach I don't want my players using it when they need to be going to college, passing their classes with relatively little study time, and memorizing a thick playbook.

Marijuana's damage to short-term memory occurs because THC alters the way in which information is processed by the hippocampus, a brain area responsible for memory formation. [...] "Because it is a steroid, THC acts on the hippocampus and inhibits memory retrieval." THC also alters the way in which sensory information is interpreted. "When THC attaches to receptors in the hippocampus, it weakness the short-term memory," and damages the nerve cells by creating structural changes to the hippocampus region of the brain. When a user has a high dose of marijuana, new information does not register into their brain and this may be lost from memory and they are not able to retrieve new information for more than a few minutes. There is also a decrease in the activity of nerve cells.

If they can't, their grades suffer and they don't get PT? Rather than making assumptions based on generalizations and stereotypes we could base these decisions on... Oh, I don't know... Actual performance?

Where are you going to draw the line? Do you want to throw disciplinary rules out the window and trust that a bunch of 18-22 year-olds living away from home for the first time can function like fully mature adults? Do you think you'd build an effective team structure that way?

These guys still need some guidance. They're going to make some poor choices even when the coach makes it clear what they should do . . . but if the coach doesn't make it clear, they'll make a hell of a lot more poor choices.

If your performance isn't up to par in class or on the field you suffer the consequences. If you're not directly harming others and you're able to handle your responsibilities, you shouldn't have your life messed with based on other people's ideas of morality or assumptions about what you may not be able to handle.

With all due respect, I don't think that's a good philosophy for a college coach to have. Pros, maybe, but college guys are too young. These guys have a lot asked of them - more really than even the pros, when you factor in that they have to go to class in addition to their 35-40 hours a week of football - and they need some supervision.

Hoke knows what he's doing. He's been around the college game over half his lifetime. He knows what college football players can handle and can't. I don't think you are being very fair to him here.

I thought the NCAA (Emmert) came out and said that student-athletes still wouldn't be allowed to use pot while on scholarship even if it was legal. This being in response to people saying "Bro, aren't all the stoners going to go play for UW and Colorado now??"

Isn't Adderall a banned substance by the NCAA? That Texas pitcher got busted for using it recently. I've always wondered how that works when you have a legit medical use for it? Some of my friends have been on Adderall and Ritalin since they were in middle school. The NCAA can't posisbly force them to stop using their medication can they?

As a side note, this leaves us with one less scholarship for this class since Hagerup effectively becomes a redshirt junior for 2013 rather than a senior and will now be on the 2014 roster. Assuming that he does not screw up again and that he is retaining his scholarship status.

During the Carr era one of my friends played at Michigan and was kicked off the team for smoking. I wonder how things would have gone for him if Hoke was there instead of Carr. Not that Carr was a bad coach, or he had any other choice. My friend had just screwed up too many times, but Hoke just seems to be such a great father figure and mentor. Things may have been different if Hoke took my friend under his wing and gave him shot a redemption under his rules. The Hoke difference may have changed him and made my friend a better man/ teammate.

It wasn't "wrong" just because Stonum effed it up. You can't just look at what happened to decide whether the previous decision was right. That's like going for a 4th and 1 from the 38, not making it, and saying that the decision to go was "wrong" because it didn't work out.

I'm of the camp that thinks that Hoke found a decent solution with Stonum. That's why it's called a second chance, not a second guarantee. Well, that, and "second guarantee" would be a terribly dumb phrase.

You could not be more wrong about Stonum. He made some dumb mistakes, more than once, but still considers himself a proud Michigan man and earned his degree in four years. Follow him on twitter and you will see how much this school, his teammates and coaches mean to him. He has nothing but great things to say about the present staff, even though he never played a down for them.

appeal to an emotional response. Go look at motor vehicle deaths in general. You are putting someone's life at risk every time you sit behind the wheel. Someone who has been drinking increases that risk of course, but don't pretend the world is a warm and fuzzy place until it is interrupted by someone you have pre-judged. Unless you are privy to his private thoughts (or lack thereof), you are hardly in a postion to define his actions.